December Book

The December Book: Consolidating

I spent yesterday and this afternoon reviewing the first act of The December Book. I gave it that working title mostly because I started it in December. At the rate it’s going just now, it could easily be December when I finish it as well.

Not that I’m displeased with what I’ve just read. I don’t have the perspective to really compare it to other things I’ve written, so I’ll just say that I’m very pleased with it indeed. It grabs me, interests me, and the characters and world give it a flavour I haven’t seen before, at least in my own small body of work. It’s different.

It’s evolving too. The music tells you as much. Back when I started, I used the soundtrack to The Village to grab the haunted essence of Edinburgh’s Old Town two hundred years ago. I eventually added Batman Begins to the mix, for faster-paced, action or horror orientated scenes. Now, as the characters have begin speaking in their own voices and leading where they once had to be dragged, the soundtrack to the book is From Hell (with Batman still kept in reserve for the most explosive stuff). The lead track from that otherwise instrumental album is Marilyn Manson’s The Nobodies, and that song has become the defining theme for my central duo. There’s one line in particular.

“We are nobodies. Want to be somebodies. The dead know just who we are.”

That pretty much sums up in a nutshell this duo. It’s so accurate, I suspect Manson is actually from a future in which this novel is already a tremendous success (perhaps an alternate reality), and was directly inspired by it. Stick it on, if the song’s in your collection. It gives clues aplenty about my book. I’ll remind you about it if, if the book’s ever released. The album’s perfect mood music for sitting down and reading it.